DOMESTICATION AND BREEDING OF WILD MEDICINAL AND AROMATIC PLANTS - THIRTY YEARS OF EXPERIENCE IN ISRAEL

There are many traditional medicinal and aromatic plants endemic to the Levant. The great climatic variations in Israel, in a relatively small area, create a wide range of natural habitats and high biodiversity of wild plants. The increased demand by industry for uniform and high quality raw material, together with the modern developments that fewer and fewer people still collect plants from the wild, and that some of the wild species plants are protected, has necessitated the cultivation of various species. This shortage of raw material has encouraged seed companies, researchers and farmers to select cultivars that could substitute for the raw material that once came from the wild. The first step in the domestication and breeding of wild plants is a survey of their dispersion according to existing distribution databases. Seed or vegetative propagation material of the target crops are systematically collected as representative of their natural diversity, and are grown in experimental fields in the Newe Ya’ar Research Center under intensive conditions - irrigation, fertilization and several harvests per year. Selection of new cultivars is somewhat different if the plant is annual or perennial and depends on the propagation methods as well. With annual species, propagation is usually done by seeds but with perennial species it could be done also by cuttings. Some of the most important annual aromatic species come from the Umbelliferae family (caraway, coriander, dill, etc.) but also from other families such as the - Labiatae (basil), Fabaceae (fenugreek), Brassicaceae (mustard) and Compositae (chamomile). In breeding a new cultivar, single plants with high performance (yield and quality) are selected from as many sources as possible. These single plants are tested in the same soil and climate conditions that later on will be the place of commercial production. The next step is to produce "families", by self-pollination, from each one of the selected plants, and again to choose only the best ones during 4 to 7 generations until a uniform line is obtained. Thus a new cultivar is "born". In perennial species, if there is a possibility of using vegetative propagation, the selection time could be shorter. The selected plants can be tested in plots after they are propagated by cuttings, as is necessary - before commercialization. This method has been used for oregano, thyme, onion, artemisia and others. Hybridization can be conducted through artificial crossing when the selection process alone does not produce a cultivar that has all the characteristics that are needed for commercial production. The next areas of study are physiology, the effects of environmental factors, and optimization of agro-technical methods of the selected cultivars.